Online job fair: Now the sifting begins

Online job fair: Now the sifting begins

By Thomas R. Temin

Apr 26, 2002

A federal online job fair by this morning had garnered 1 million hits on its Web server and 11,700 applications for 270 IT job openings. The fair, conducted by the Office of Personnel Management and the federal CIO Council, went live Monday and is scheduled to close at midnight tonight.

Then officials from OPM and the hiring agencies will sift through the mountain of entries to see what they've got, said Ira Hobbs, acting Agriculture CIO and chairman of the council's work force subcommittee.

'Our gut feeling is, we are getting a qualitative improvement' in applicants compared with those from the conventional hiring process, Hobbs said. He spoke at a breakfast meeting of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's Bethesda, Md., chapter. Typically, Hobbs said, IT job openings attract no more than 10 applicants, and often there is no suitable candidate among them.

State Department CIO Fernando Burbano backed up Hobbs' speculation, noting that when State conducted an online job fair for its overseas IT personnel requirements several years ago, candidate quality was in what he termed the high 90 percent range. In the current job fair, 100 of the openings are at State, Burbano said.